


13. "Sorry I'm Late"

by hellaskye



Series: 100 Ways To Say "I Love You" [13]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: :) :) :) :), F/M, Gen, death tw, srry not srry, this one is angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 20:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7478511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellaskye/pseuds/hellaskye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They have to drag Katie out of the hospital, still screaming, and Natasha realizes how empty everything is in the new silence."</p>
<p>Natasha was always a fighter. But only because there was something to fight for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	13. "Sorry I'm Late"

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Major Character Injury, Major Character Deaths
> 
> so this was not what was planned for this number but then I got feels. I guess It had been too long since angst?   
> Write me comments!! 
> 
> [twitter here](https://www.twitter.com/gunsandarrows)   
>  [tumblr here](https://www.katebxshops.tumblr.com)

13\. “Sorry I’m late.”

 

Natasha has a dream, when she closes her eyes. In the dream, she’s in a fight, and it’s a bloody battle, and just when she starts to worry for her odds, Clint shows up beside her, and he smirks at her and says: “Sorry I’m late”, and they win the fight together.  

Natasha wakes up to a nightmare. She wakes up in the hospital, and Clint is in the cot next to her, hooked up to so many machines and too pale, and Kate is asleep in the chair in the room, scratched and battered. Natasha manages to pour herself a cup of water and she drinks it, setting it down shakily on the bedside tray. The noise wakes Kate up, and she springs out of her chair to hover at Natasha’s side instead. 

“What happened?” Natasha asks the shaken girl, and Katie just looks at her for a minute before gathering her thoughts.

“Clint and I we’re supposed to do a movie night tonight,” Kate begins, eyes tired and voice rough. “But 3 minutes into the movie, he jumps up and tells me he has to go somewhere, and that he’ll be back. He left, and I stayed at his place to watch the movie, but almost 45 minutes later, I get a call from Matt - Daredevil - saying that I needed to get my ass to Hell’s Kitchen. I guess you had texted Clint that you needed back up, out in Hell’s Kitchen, and he got there, but you were already injured, and he couldn’t hold them off by himself, so he called Matt, who called me, because by the time I got there, both you and Clint were severely injured. You had been stabbed and had a concussion from bashing your head against a dumpster, and Clint had been shot 4 times and stabbed and he’d lost a lot of blood and-” 

Natasha lays her hand on top of Kate’s as the younger girl trails off with a helpless noise. Kate just shakes her head, tears brimming in her eyes.  

“They don’t think he’ll make it,” Kate confesses, and suddenly Natasha’s monitors are beeping like crazy as she realizes what Kate is saying. Clint is dying. Her Clint is dying, on the bed next to her, and it feels like a part of her is dying too. But Kate is a part of Clint, and therefore a part of her, and Natasha forces herself not to go into complete shock, because the doctors are crowding around and Kate looks horrified, like she thinks it’s her fault, so Natasha lets the doctors work, cooperating for maybe the first time in her life. 

The doctors quiet the machines, and one stops to tell Natasha and Kate that they need to be careful, because Natasha is still in critical condition, and even as she leaves, Natasha feels the drugs taking a toll on her system, so she welcomes the black haze and falls into it. 

* * *

The others visit. Tony has the best doctors in the world working with Clint and Natasha, but after 3 weeks, neither one of their conditions improve. Natasha weaves in and out of consciousness, and she’s aware that Kate is always there. Steve has decorated their hospital rooms with drawings of New York, and of the team, and Bruce brings a couple of plants, and it’s clear that they’re trying to brighten the place up. Thor tries to get someone to use Asguardian healing magic on them, but the lady says something that makes Thor angry and a little bit sad. He won’t tell them what it was, but Tasha is pretty sure it has to do with the fact that Clint is too close to The End at this point, and Tasha isn’t even trying to get better. How can she, when she can feel the one good part of her dying slowly? 

Wanda stops by once or twice, but she inevitably breaks down, and no one blames her, because she was as close to Clint as any of them, and she’s still suffering from the loss of Pietro. Sam stops by, and he tries to begin to counsel Natasha, but she gives him a Look, and he sighs and gives in, and instead they just sit in silence together. James stops by, and Natasha thinks that maybe he is the one that understands the best, because he too is mourning a part of himself that is dead.  

* * *

It is early one morning, at the light just before dawn, a light when a little boy would stand at a target and shoot arrow after arrow, until the little boy turns into a young man, and the young man turns into an adult, and the adult is joined by a little girl, who is really a young woman, but will always be a little girl to the young man who stood in front of targets everyday before dawn. 

Natasha wakes suddenly, feeling a sharp pain in her chest, and she thinks maybe she is dying. She is, but it is the part of her that holds the archer that dies in the early dawn lighting, and the machines beep a high monotone, and the noise blends with a scream, and Natasha realizes that Kate is screaming as the doctors come and press things and try to revive the man in the bed next to her, and she could tell them that there’s no use, and that the man in the bed is no longer Clinton Francis Barton, a little boy from Iowa who had a habit of saving people. 

But there is no saving the little boy, and so, early on December 21st, the darkest day of the year, the doctors pull a sheet over the man who used to be Natasha’s partner, and Katie is still screaming, and nothing seems right. Natasha is still in the hospital, and Clint is gone, and Natasha feels so cold. They have to drag Katie out of the hospital, still screaming, and Natasha realizes how empty everything is in the new silence. 

* * *

It is the dark of the night, in the witching hour that a young fallen angel with fire red hair used to work, but the little disgraced angel turns into a scared young girl cornered in an alley in Budapest, an arrow in her shoulder, shooting bullets from behind a barricade with the archer that gave her the arrow. The scared young girl grows into a young woman with eyes as bright as the stars, and hair still as red as the blood she’s spilled, but with her archer they can make up for their sins, in the witching hour, in the dark of the night.  

It is the dark of night before Valentine’s Day, a martyr’s holiday that the fiery fallen angel had scorned until she’d met a child who believed in love, and he’d brought her home with him, and now he calls her home again, and she follows him home. Behind her she hears doctors calling out medical names and trying to fix her heart, and she hears Kate telling them that they won’t succeed, not anymore, because what is a heart without its soul? The doctors try, oh do they try, but there is not cure for a broken heart, so instead, Natasha follows her archer home. 

Finally she sees him, and he quirks an eyebrow in the way that he always did, and she just smiles, because all is right for the widow and her hawk.  

“Hey you,” she smirks, drawing close to him. “Sorry I’m late.”


End file.
